Jennifer Tappan is a historian of Sub-Saharan Africa. Her research focuses on the history of medicine and health in Africa. She is the author of The Riddle of Malnutrition: The Long Arc of Biomedical and Public Health Interventions in Uganda and her work has also appeared in the International Journal of African Historical Studies and an edited volume: Global Health in Africa: Historical Perspectives on Disease Control. She is currently working on the history of yellow fever in Africa.

She received her PhD from Columbia University in 2010 and is now Associate Professor of African History at Portland State University. She teaches courses on African history and the history of medicine and global health.